Nancy Falik Cott (born November 8, 1945) is an American historian and professor who has taught at Yale and Harvard universities, specializing in gender topics in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries.
She attended public schools in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania[citation needed] and then Cornell University, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1967.
[1] Cott became a lecturer at Boston Public Library, then in 1975 was appointed to teach history and American studies at Yale University.
[1] At the invitation of Drew Gilpin Faust of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study she accepted a position as Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library in 2001.
[5] Cott has pointed out that the Christian tradition of monogamous marriage only dates back to the time of Christ, and was not strongly enforced by Catholic ecclesiastical law until 1400 or 1500.
"[8] When testifying in January 2010 in the challenge to California Proposition 8 (2008), which banned same sex marriage, she was asked to comment on the defense assertion that "the purpose of the institution of marriage, the central purpose, is to promote procreation and to channel naturally procreative sexual activity between men and women into stable and enduring unions."